This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Toronto’s first home game of 2014 and, after a modest three-game win streak, their worst performance of the season.

No bailout by heroic goaltending in a humiliating 7-1 loss to the Rangers, New York now just three points behind in the Eastern Conference.

Jonathan Bernier, making his fifth straight start, was less than ordinary, though facing the usual barrage of shots, 18-7 in the opening 20 minutes alone.

Still, if it had been James Reimer between the pipes instead, trailing by two — one of them a badly played unassisted goal off the stick of ex-Leaf Dominic Moore — he might not have been out there when the second period began. Or still out there at 4-0.

Only at 5-0 — Moore unassisted again — did Carlyle pull out the hook, directing a rattled Bernier to take a seat at the end of the pine, dispatching Reimer for his first taste of action since end of the first on Dec. 21.

“I was trying to get to the end of the period,” Carlyle explained afterwards. Couldn’t make it.

“I didn’t want to leave Bernier in there any longer.”

Reimer has been yanked four times this season. For Bernier, it was first-time-pulled as a Leaf.

Also not finishing the game: David Clarkson and Carl Gunnarsson, the former blocking a hard slap shot off his ankle and the latter falling awkwardly in the corner on a thumping check from Carl Hagelin.

Roughly one-fifth the roaring number who withstood cold and snow at the gelid Big House in Michigan three days earlier watched the Maple Leafs make a muddle out of their encounter with the tired Manhattans, who’d lost large in Pittsburgh the previous evening and were closing out a five-game road trip.

Fresh off their New Year’s Day shootout win against Detroit, thawed out from Arctic temperatures and face-shearing wind, the Leafs were hoping to build off momentum gained in racking up points through their last half dozen matches, good as it’s gotten on Carlyle’s watch.

“We felt that we were becoming more competitive,” said the coach of his team’s commendable acquittal over the last week and a half.

It all blew up fast. “This one kind of sent an A-bomb.”

While he might have expected a one-period-or-so emotional letdown after the hoopla of the Winter Classic, Carlyle was stunned by how poorly the team played. “I was expecting a lot more from our group than what we got. Back to the drawing board.”

Entering last night’s game, Toronto had faced an average of 36.4 shots per game, which is oodles too many and just plain crazy. In his previous four starting assignments, Bernier had on three occasions been bombarded by more than 40 shots.

So maybe he’d reached the breaking point — to the tune of five goals surrendered to New York on 32 shots before being mercifully removed. His teammates left him high and dry on multiple second-period breakaways, it’s true, but Bernier by then was playing deep in his net and overwhelmed. Said Carlyle: “It seemed like, the third goal — that was the hockey game.”

There was, in fact, nothing to salvage from this match, as Lupul bluntly confessed.

“Sometimes you have losses where you can take something positive out of it,” the lone Leaf scorer said. “Tonight, we did nothing well. There’s not much we can take out of this apart from not wanting to have this feeling again.”

He analyzed: “We weren’t moving the puck out of our zone. We were getting beat off the rush, one-on-one. Offensively, we weren’t really creating anything. So, we can all share the blame equally in this one.”

Dan Girardi opened the scoring on a long, lazy looper, and perhaps Bernier never saw it, but the shot came after Toronto had twice failed in clearing opportunities. Moore connected for his first on a sharp angle shot that seemed to completely handcuff Bernier. “I thought he was going to pass it. I was cheating a little bit.”

Then the Rangers just got goal-glutting, if aided and abetted by Leaf errors.

No Tim Gleason on the bench, by the way, and a steady blue liner would have been appreciated. Carlyle thought it the best to keep the newly acquired defenceman in civvies until he’d had at least another practice to learn the team’s system, because apparently they have one.

All the better too, that Gleason wasn’t a part of this debacle, though he might be wanting to open a vein right about now.

The Leafs did finally catch a bit of slack from league enforcer Brendan Shanahan, at least, with Lupul in suited situ, if $10,000 lighter in the wallet for that Jan. 1 cross-check on the blind side of Patrick Eaves.

“I’ll admit it was for sure not a good play,” he said after the morning skate, the first comment he’d offered about the supplementary discipline meted out by Shanahan Friday. “I had my stick up and hit him in the face so I knew there was going to be some type of punishment, although it was an accident.”

Given the league’s sensitivity to head shots and the fact Lupul is a repeat offender, the Leafs were likely anticipating worse. Instead, they avoided their sixth suspension of the season.

“We actually had a long discussion about a lot of things (on the play),” said Lupul about the telephone session with Shanahan. “My stick kind of remained on the ice. I think that’s probably why I avoided suspension. You can’t have your stick up in the air. In that case it hit someone and it hurt him. I’m happy to hear he was all right.”

Not quite all right. Eaves left the game and needed to have his previously broken jaw reset.

“I certainly feel bad about him not being able to finish the Winter Classic,” said Lupul. “I know it was a special day for everyone. I certainly feel really bad about that.”

Now he, and the rest of the Leafs, can feel really bad about this sucker instead.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com